EXTRACTION

Who will win the battle for 21st-century green dominance?

Mining is a method of extracting something that is valuable from an environment, transforming the landscape in which it occurs, often irrevocably. That’s the history of coal, shale, gold, diamonds, and other natural resources. The author, strategic co-director of the Climate and Community Institute, focuses her attention on a current global mining commodity, lithium, a “critical mineral” not because it is scarce but because it is essential for economic development. Lithium serves mainly as the key ingredient in rechargeable batteries for electric vehicles, solar panels, wind turbines, and more. The supply is plentiful—lithium deposits have been found on all seven continents. As happens with the mining of many natural resources, the fusion of national security, environmental concerns, and economic policy becomes a political issue. Riofrancos centers her investigation on South America, detailing her visits and interviews with public officials involved in lithium resource policy and environmental activists trying to influence them. She balances this with the history of colonialism’s role in taking natural resources, such as Columbus’ extraction of Hispaniola gold using enslaved workers in the name of the Spanish crown. The tide turned, perhaps, with the rise of OPEC, when oil-exporting countries came together to force multinational corporations to the bargaining table. Countries began to assert their rights to control how, when, and where their national resources would be developed and sold. The U.S. role became prominent during the first Trump administration, which supported the domestic mining and processing of lithium, policies expanded by President Biden’s increased investment in the process. The balance of forces—between public and private, resource nationalism and environmentalism, rich and poor countries—remains fragile.

A well-researched look at global needs and wants, in conflict with local rights.